The Rational Design of International Institutions

2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 761-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Koremenos ◽  
Charles Lipson ◽  
Duncan Snidal
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Institutional Variation

Why do international institutions vary so widely in terms of such key institutional features as membership, scope, and flexibility? We argue that international actors are goal-seeking agents who make specific institutional design choices to solve the particular cooperation problems they face in different issue-areas. In this article we introduce the theoretical framework of the Rational Design project. We identify five important features of institutions—membership, scope, centralization, control, and flexibility—and explain their variation in terms of four independent variables that characterize different cooperation problems: distribution, number of actors, enforcement, and uncertainty. We draw on rational choice theory to develop a series of empirically falsifiable conjectures that explain this institutional variation. The authors of the articles in this special issue of International Organization evaluate the conjectures in specific issue-areas and the overall Rational Design approach.

scholarly journals Contesting Contested Multilateralism: Why the West Joined the Rest in Founding the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Knoerich ◽  
Francisco Urdinez
Keyword(s):  
Rational Design ◽  
Organizational Design ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Infrastructure Investment ◽  
Investment Bank ◽  
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
Elite Interviews

Abstract This study examines why a large number of Western advanced economies joined the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015 despite the bank’s purported challenge to the Western-centred international order in the area of multilateral development finance. Through a mixed-method examination involving elite interviews, analyses of government pronouncements and regressions, and by drawing on concepts from rational choice theory, international policy diffusion, and rational design of international institutions, this study finds that the AIIB’s success with regard to its large membership is due to China’s effective creation of a demand for the organization among Western advanced economies. We argue that policymakers in Western countries enjoyed ‘induced agency’, which China granted them in the process of creating the organization and deciding about its membership. First, Western advanced economies had agency because their involvement was needed to prevent the AIIB from becoming a homogenous small organization consisting of Asian debtor countries in favour of a global organization with a heterogeneous group of both debtor and creditor country members. The AIIB was thus set up to accommodate the specific economic and political goals of Western advanced economies. Secondly, Western advanced economies experienced agency in the process of deciding about their membership in the bank because China proactively courted them to join the AIIB. China moreover endorsed the spontaneous intensification of communications that ensued among Western advanced economies with regard to joining the AIIB. Both efforts ultimately resulted in diffusion among them of the decision to become members. Thirdly, the Western advanced economies were granted agency in the process of determining the AIIB’s organizational design, thus allowing them to converge the initially diverse visions for the institutional design of the bank and shift it from contesting the existing system of multilateral development banks to effectively integrating into it. Our study thus advances a theory of country-specific demand for membership in an international organization.

Rational Choice Theory and the 1990 Party Merger in South Korea

OUGHTOPIA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-282
Author(s):  
In-Kyun Kim ◽  
Myeong-Geon Koh
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory

POLITICS-LAW CONVERGENCE OR DIVERGENCE? 'SMALL' POLITICAL PARTIES, REALPOLITIKAND SOUTH AFRICA'S 20 YEARS OF DEMOCRACY

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kealeboga J Maphunye
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
Secondary Research ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
African Charter

This article examines South Africa's 20-year democracy by contextualising the roles of the 'small' political parties that contested South Africa's 2014 elections. Through the  prism  of South  Africa's  Constitution,  electoral legislation  and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, it examines these parties' roles in South Africa's democratisation; their influence,  if any, in parliament, and whether they play any role in South Africa's continental or international engagements. Based on a review of the extant literature, official documents,  legislation, media, secondary research, reports and the results of South Africa's elections, the article relies on game theory, rational choice theory and theories of democracy and democratic consolidation to examine 'small' political parties' roles in the country's political and legal systems. It concludes that the roles of 'small' parties in governance and democracy deserve greater recognition than is currently the case, but acknowledges the extreme difficulty experienced by the 'small'  parties in playing a significant role in democratic consolidation, given their formidable opponent in a one-party dominant system.

Rational Choice Contractualism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Moehler
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Correct Choice ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Decision Situation ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Traditional Understanding

This chapter discusses contractualist theories of justice that, although they rely explicitly on moral assumptions in the traditional understanding of morality, employ rational choice theory for the justification of principles of justice. In particular, the chapter focuses on the dispute between Rawls and Harsanyi about the correct choice of principles of justice in the original position. The chapter shows that there is no winner in the Rawls–Harsanyi dispute and, ultimately, formal methods alone cannot justify moral principles. This finding is significant for the development of the rational decision situation that serves for the derivation of the weak principle of universalization for the domain of pure instrumental morality.

Two Theorists of Action: Ihering and Weber

1991 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Material Interests ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Historical Role

AbstractRudolf von Ihering was the leading German philosopher of law of the nineteenth century. He was also a major source of Weber’s more famous sociological definitions of action. Characteristically, Weber transformed material he found: in this case Ihering attempt to reconcile the causaland teleological aspects of action. In Ihering’s hands these become, respectively, the external and internal moments of action, or intentional thought and the factual consequences of action. For Weber they are made into epistemic aspects of action, the causal and the meaningful, each of which is essential to an account of action, but which are logically and epistemically distinct. Ihering thought purposes were the products of underlying interests, but included ‘ideal’ interests in this category. Weber radicalized this by expanding the category and making it historically central. This radicalization bears on rational choice theory: if ideal interests have a large historical role independent of material interests, and are not fully explicable on such grounds as ‘sour grapes’, the methods appropriate to the study of the transformation of ideas, meaning genealogies in the Nietzschean sense, are central to the explanation of action.

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